Trump Can’t Enforce Deadline for Putin to Cut Peace Deal

The two-week deadline President Donald Trump gave Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine expired, with Russia showing no signs of stopping the violence as Western leaders pressed for additional security guarantees for Ukraine, Carla Babb reported for Military Times.

With Putin ignoring Trump’s latest deadline for peace talks, a Ukrainian official told Military Times that “the time is now” to exert economic pressure on both Russia and China. (Photo: Benjamin D Applebaum, U.S. Department of Defense)

Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron by phone Thursday following a Paris meeting of the so-called

“Coalition of the Willing” supporting Ukraine. Zelensky described the call as a “long, detailed conversation about how to push the situation towards peace,” adding:

“The most important thing is pressure, using strong measures, including economic ones, to force an end to the war. The key to peace is depriving the Russian war machine of money and resources.”

With Putin ignoring Trump’s latest deadline for peace talks, a Ukrainian official told Military Times that “the time is now” to exert economic pressure on both Russia and China, which has bolstered Moscow’s defense industry.

The official added that if Russia’s economy remains “propped up, then the US steals a chance for transformation in Russia that could be viewed as a sort of USSR collapse 2.0,” referring to the Soviet Union’s downfall in the late 1980s and early 1990s, spurred largely by Western economic pressure under then-US President Ronald Reagan.

Russia is currently investing 40% of its state budget in defense, according to NATO.